Wireshark mailing list archives
Re: Wireshark ABI compatibilty in release branches
From: Bálint Réczey <balint () balintreczey hu>
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2013 22:12:58 +0100
Hi, 2013/1/20 Jaap Keuter <jaap.keuter () xs4all nl>
On 01/18/2013 08:05 PM, Evan Huus wrote:On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 1:12 PM, Bálint Réczey <balint () balintreczey hu>wrote:Hi, I think we did a very good job in maintaining backward compatibility in 1.6.x and 1.8.x releases [1]. In >1.6.1 there were no backward incompatible change in the 1.6.x branch and on 1.8.x branch there were only one [2]. It is caused by a fix [3] for bug 7348 [4]. IMHO while fixing the bug was clearly useful we could consider reverting the fix on 1.8.x it to return to the original ABI in 1.8.5. What do you, developers think? What policy should we follow in case of accidental ABI breakages? Cheers, Balint [1] http://upstream-tracker.org/versions/wireshark.html [2]http://upstream-tracker.org/compat_reports/wireshark/1.8.2_to_1.8.3/abi_compat_report.html[3]http://code.wireshark.org/git/?p=wireshark;a=commit;h=e5e09f70168e7534a91959255e558c8a5cd9991a[4] https://bugs.wireshark.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=7348In this particular case the bug is so minor that I have no problem with reverting it (I personally wouldn't have bothered back-porting it in the first place). In the general case I think we should try to avoid ABI breakage where possible, but not at the cost of crashers or security bugs. The very first google hit for many variants of 'libwireshark' or 'using libwireshark' is [1] which explains how it's not really usable in 3rd-party programs anyways. Tangentially, it would be nice if it were usable as a proper library in 3rd-party programs, but that's a lot of work somebody would have to do to get it in shape. Cheers, Evan [1]http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10308127/using-libwireshark-to-get-wireshark-functionality-programatically/10355701#10355701Well, the whole exercise to get the dissection engine nicely packed into a lib was (partly) because of returning questions about a 'stable' engine lib. So we either do it properly or not at all. This bug falls into the category 'nice to have' so should not lead to API/ABI breakage. Just my ¤0.02, Jaap
Based on the supporting opinions I have added reverting the fix to the 1.8.5 queue. Cheers, Balint
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Current thread:
- Wireshark ABI compatibilty in release branches Bálint Réczey (Jan 18)
- Re: Wireshark ABI compatibilty in release branches Evan Huus (Jan 18)
- Re: Wireshark ABI compatibilty in release branches Jaap Keuter (Jan 20)
- Re: Wireshark ABI compatibilty in release branches Bálint Réczey (Jan 21)
- Re: Wireshark ABI compatibilty in release branches Jaap Keuter (Jan 20)
- Re: Wireshark ABI compatibilty in release branches Evan Huus (Jan 18)